German Armored Forces & Vehicles

Panzers in Graudenz, September, 1939.

Bundesarchiv

Panzer troops, headed by a PzKpfw IV D, enter Graudenz, (in Polish, Grudziadz), 3 September, 1939. The city was highly exposed to German attack, and fell in a three-day battle at the very start of the war. The enthusiastic welcome is explained by the fact that this city was heavily Germanised in the 18th and 19th century by German kings/emperors aware of its potential and actual importance as a strategic centre and trading centre for the grain trade. This had to some extent been reversed by natural process producing Polish settlement, and by the policy of independent Poland in the interwar period. However, Graudenz was still substantially occupied by ethnic Germans in 1939. Best regards, JR.